SPEAKER_00: okay we have major breaking news bolt ceo ryan breslau has stepped down as ceo and he is moving

SPEAKER_01: to an executive chairman role this is after yes he did this crazy yc thread that yc was not worth it this after the thread that yc and venture is a mob the kid threw bombs and now he's out of a job

SPEAKER_00: was this his decision or was he pushed out we're going to talk about it today and

Jason Calacanis: and we're going to talk about the fundamentals of his argument about y combinator which actually turns into a little bit of an extra a bonus vc sunday school if you will vc monday school we also god help us wade into the joe rogan conversation uh we talk about the explanology is what we're calling it an explanation and an apology instagram video we also break it down in pieces good one by the way good producers good good coinage explanology explanology we break it down in pieces but we also reflect on the risk to spotify's business overall and just what this means in terms of the landscape of content publishing platforms it's and it's a messy business and we i think agree that spotify at least kind of whiffed it here hopefully they're going to pull

SPEAKER_12: it back together it's a great episode stick with us this week in startups is brought to you by

SPEAKER_14: lemon.io need to speed up your product development without draining your budget hire vetted engineers from europe at lemon.io go to lemon.io twist to get 15 off for the first four weeks our crowd helps you invest early in pre-ipo companies alongside professional vcs if you're interested in investing you can join our crowd for free at o-u-r-c-r-o-w-d.com twist and marlo every founder should have a coach to help them become more effective at managing and leading their teams get 15 off your coaching membership at get marlo.com twist all right welcome everybody we're

Jason Calacanis: gonna get right to the news and there's the news we thought was the big news today until the new news came along and is the new big news of the day so much news is breaking i mean i know like right now you're sitting there like which story is it going to be because it could be one of five things much news so much we are actually going to start though with our own wheelhouse which is this ongoing conversation about y combinator and stripe and ryan breslow the ceo of bolt just throwing bombs throwing lightning bolts if you will non-stop and as we were about to start the show this is how you know this is happening in real time we found out that ryan breslow bolt ceo is actually stepping down wait as ceo and moving into a role as executive chair jason go i'm assuming he needs to spend more time with his

SPEAKER_26: family no i mean i like ryan he has his choice no no he's on he was unhinged this past week there

SPEAKER_31: are two tweet storms there was the mob tweet storm and then there was the yc tweet storm and uh let's face

SPEAKER_32: it this kid uh went rogue he flew very close to the sun and i think maybe the wax on the uh on the um wings might have just melted a little bit and icarus is coming back down to earth what you know was this

SPEAKER_31: really his decision this seems to me like maybe some board members came to him and said listen

SPEAKER_01: great to fight up great marketing are you okay uh like you might be under a lot of stress maybe

SPEAKER_32: and it's i got the sense uh when i see this announcement that maybe he's feeling a tremendous amount of stress from all of this and maybe just needs a break and maybe the lashing out on social media if you consider it lashing out i would say picking fights on social media i i didn't mind it i thought it was kind of brilliant um in terms of increasing the profile of bolt i don't mind people mixing it up i thought it was brilliant but i think somebody probably on the board came to him and said listen you might need a break and uh you know let's have you become executive chairman and i don't know this is very strange because what do you think yeah well i have a lot of questions

Jason Calacanis: about that because that it has not been common let's say right like we've seen over the past few i mean founders have wide latitude especially when their companies are worth 14 billion dollars so i feel like it would be pretty surprising for any public company board i mean there are so many ceos right now out there where i'm just like how do you still have your job up to and including for example the activision blizzard guy like i don't know the ceo of united right like you look around

SPEAKER_37: you're like what are boards even doing mark zuckerberg correct so that would be i think an unusual

SPEAKER_38: move you are you're 100 correct so a company making this much money yeah let me uh refine

SPEAKER_32: my take on it then i think this was a joint decision because you're right i don't think he could be forced out he probably had either some combination of super voting shares or a lot of shares and generally the founders vc's and board members are reticent to remove a founder uh over the last 10 15 years it takes a lot i mean so much so that they're making a showtime show or something about uber and travis being ousted right exactly and that was so notable um that proxy fight that you know lawsuits and removing him was such a dramatic what two-year process one year of really intensity um and uh obviously i was on the losing team on that one you know i was i i had literally pledged my shares to him so he could vote my shares to increase his voting percentage to try to

SPEAKER_44: keep him in oh wow i didn't know that that's a little inside information i just disclosed here for

SPEAKER_46: the first time i think are you in trouble is this cool no i just you know for me it was like hey

SPEAKER_01: listen he brought me in i'm here to support him mistakes were made i'm trying to help him get where

SPEAKER_44: he needs to go and uh i was in favor of him staying on board but anyway let's put that aside were the

SPEAKER_00: tweet threads he did you know like a fireable offense no i mean i don't think they were particularly

SPEAKER_31: damaging right they were not damaging everybody knows what bolt is now right so the question is like

SPEAKER_32: are people not going to go work at bolt is the stock not going to go up are they not going to have customers no i don't i think in all these cases people are like what does bolt do again

SPEAKER_56: or should i what's their twitter handle i follow them or maybe i'll buy shares in secondary this

Jason Calacanis: guy seems like a baller yeah i actually think that we have to consider the possibility that ryan breslow

SPEAKER_37: meant the things that he said wanted to say them yes that it wasn't like and he responded very emotionally to the idea that it was a pr stunt right or that it was in some way saturday because

SPEAKER_62: we had this on the docket for today yeah and i really wanted to talk to about it because it is about accelerators and are they worth it or not and is yc worth it and i've actually been outspoken

SPEAKER_64: about this so maybe we could walk through what he said about yc and i can give some reactions and context to it i think it's important because that was the second tweet storm we know the first

SPEAKER_03: one that we talked about that in last week's episodes right and regardless of the stepping down

SPEAKER_67: he clearly has something to say yes so let's get into the thing he has to say which he started

SPEAKER_68: quite clearly with y combinator is not worth it a thread i mean what a title i mean say what you will the kid knows how to to start a thread i mean this derailed my whole was this saturday this was saturday

SPEAKER_38: yeah this was all of a sudden we were on group chat molly puts down the laundry like gets the popcorn

SPEAKER_37: here we go yeah then he stated that this is definitely not content marketing for bolt he said before we dig in a note on my motivation some think my recent tweets are marketing stunts the truth there's nothing that pisses me off more than the mob that goes on in silicon valley my mission

SPEAKER_38: of empowering the next generation of entrepreneurs drives all my work sounds familiar and he's doubling

SPEAKER_64: down i like doubling down he's doubling down and he heard us talking about this being marketing last week and other people had that same hot take and so he addresses it so he's listening to the industry's reaction to his first bomb throwing and this one and then so he goes on okay

Jason Calacanis: now to yc he says this thread is long but here's the main takeaway also the kid knows how to construct a lead he's like maybe you're not going to read the whole thing so tldr is yc might have started off pure but money power and greed have corrupted it today yc is a lottery factory capturing 10

SPEAKER_41: from founders with little concern about the individuals going through the program okay now

SPEAKER_32: this is where you have to pause for a second and look at each of the claims yc might have started off pure we all agree so this is incredibly persuasive his his constructing of arguments whether you agree with him or not ryan either was in debate club or he's paying attention to how to tweet and how to construct an argument so yc might have started off pure he's saying something that we can all agree with and he's putting a might in there but money power and greed have corrupted it we all agree that

SPEAKER_64: money power and greed corrupt so if you just think about this as a construct he's getting you to say yes twice which is a great way to sell your ideas now he's saying yc is a lottery factory again you're saying yes and you're nodding but all ventures the lottery isn't it yes like we say that all the time and they're capturing 10 for founders well that's factually true so now you got a fourth yes in the construction of the argument now here's where the fifth one uh we can debate yeah with little concern about the individual individuals going through the program so we get you to say yes four times just so you understand how to be persuasive the fourth one is false they obviously care about the companies in the program i know the partners there these are people who have a lot of choices of where to work they care deeply about the individuals going through the program so i don't think that that's actually accurate and it's kind of unfair people at yc are dedicated to those companies are there too many of them is 10 too much given the economics of today's market you know should that have changed over time those are you know nuanced conversations but the fifth thing here i think is not true

Jason Calacanis: well it what's interesting about the fifth thing though is that it is in some way it's unfalsifiable like it's fundamentally subjective unless you actually know those people you can't prove it either way which is so it's so it's creates it's comp i mean this is so interesting because we're deconstructing also how information spreads yes but here are what he considers to be his proof for the

SPEAKER_67: statements as he's laid them out first he says they've become predatory first and foremost he says the cost is beyond predatory for five hundred thousand dollars yc has two separate safes one for seven percent and one of the earliest possible possible valuation in your company the result is that they own 10 to 14 percent of your company out of the gate now this model is also somewhat familiar well we

SPEAKER_32: do it at large right and here's how uh to look at this they're talking about yc's new model their new model uh paradoxically was something that i kind of pioneered with the the launch uh model which was we would put in 100k for six percent pretty similar to the yc deal which i think is 125 for seven um and that's the standard accelerator deal we can debate if that's a good deal or not i think it's a great deal for people for the top accelerators for people who are first-time founders if you're a third or fourth time founder do you need to do that because it kind of insinuates a two million dollar valuation for that seven percent maybe you don't need that the second amount is you know which is what we were doing we would match whatever you got in the open market at whatever valuation you got they're doing something similar with this extra 375 i think they're putting in so if they put that 375

SPEAKER_64: in at 20 million which a lot of yc companies might go for they're only getting what is that like 1.5 so they're actually more like nine and nine percent right if it's at 10 million sure they're getting another 3.75 so they're just over 10. but the truth is you're going to give that to other investors so would you care if yc had 9 to 14 or yc had 7 and some other angel had it or some other seed fund the

SPEAKER_37: founder doesn't actually care because someone is going to own 10 to 15 either way is what you're saying

SPEAKER_64: somebody's going to own seven the accelerator and somebody's going to own the difference between

SPEAKER_88: seven and 14 a seed fund typically so in truth if you're a founder if you could get all that money up front guaranteed and not have to waste your time in finding investors and it was at the same terms

SPEAKER_64: it's actually a better deal yeah you do you understand that right did i explain it properly

Jason Calacanis: oh yeah absolutely i mean someone's going to own 10 to 15 either way this way the funding is guaranteed you know exactly who owns your 10 to 15 percent correct you're off to the races the only question i guess i i have and maybe ryan has too is could you have gotten more money for the 10 to 15 percent if you went to the open market is this like the easy choice that's a bit of a discount and

SPEAKER_32: that is what anybody going to an accelerator has to answer the question because it really is that two million dollar early evaluation if you go to the uh launch accelerate tech stars or why common here i can tell you as a first-time founder you're going to have a much easier time raising money and your company will become worth more than seven percent more valuable so that's a pretty easy calculation to make now that makes a lot of other investors jealous but the truth is if i were to put my name on and launch his name on it or yc or tech stars does the sorting process for the investment community and you're learning about this now as a venture capitalist you see how much work you're putting into sorting yep if somebody were to sort 100 companies and say these are the seven best which is what we do at the accelerator and what y combinator does you'd be like okay that's worth

SPEAKER_60: something i'm going to pay attention to those seven companies thank you if you respect that

SPEAKER_00: person i have a track record right so if your company would have been worth six million if it's

SPEAKER_64: but worth seven million which would be like 15 more it's actually uh worth it so that's all the founder has to decide right is do do you make the company more than seven percent or whatever the

SPEAKER_47: difference is in that 125k so if it's five percent six percent seven percent better you should do it

SPEAKER_37: nobody's making you do this right is that the fun like if you're the fat to that except that when

SPEAKER_105: you sign the deal yeah go ahead no you're right that's another incredibly um basic and important point that's missed in his argument which is there's no gun to anybody's head here you're making

SPEAKER_32: that choice as a founder and uh it's pretty great for the founder now every and if the company becomes a unicorn every investor looks like they got a deal what that very simplistic immature version of looking at the world does not account for is all the losses which is in the previous tweet which is it's a lottery and right only you know you basically have a lottery of if it's going to work or not so when

SPEAKER_64: you look at that crazy valuation and you know when you do become a unicorn and it's airbnb you're like

SPEAKER_60: that makes no sense why did they get that deal you have to then say okay well a thousand other startups failed and they got zero dollars back right and they did all the work of running the accelerator which i think they have 100 people running their accelerator maybe 150 people work at yc i'm not sure what the number is now somebody can fact check us when you're scaling your startup

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SPEAKER_67: in some ways with the idea that this is predatory i mean ryan argues that this is an enormous ownership that is nowhere near the value created and it sounds like simply not true disagree he then names five beliefs about y combinator and breaks them down one by one that the name will raise valuation by more than that 10 to 14 percent that the y that yc will hold on let's start with that first we do one at a

SPEAKER_120: time i think we should because that point see what he's doing here is he's blending those two rounds

SPEAKER_44: the seven percent you could say you know they're actually saying the core belief there if we go back one to the number one on that list yeah you only have to say does a company become where it's seven

SPEAKER_32: percent more valuable right not 10 to 14 because the 10 to 14 that last eight through 14 points is at

SPEAKER_123: market rate it's at the market rate right so the market determine 375 000 but that's not all you're

SPEAKER_32: necessarily raising correct so he's just kind of in order to make his argument stronger he's being intellectually dishonest on that one so in that first one he's saying yc's name will raise valuation by more than seven percent is the most accurate not the 10 to 14. it's a subtle point but that last

SPEAKER_60: 375k is that market rate not at the seven percent rate but it's kind of like a pro rata though right

Jason Calacanis: like no matter what that 375 ends up buying yc 10 to 14 percent we're straying a little bit into vc sunday

SPEAKER_62: school here so what you do is you would take the seven percent out for the original note which they

SPEAKER_32: bought for 125. so what he's saying in the math here is there's three to seven percent that that 375 buys

SPEAKER_60: if it was at a 10 million valuation it would be 3 million 300 you know the 3.75 would buy 3.75 points and if it was at six seven eight it would buy a little more but that is that market rate so yc

SPEAKER_64: promises you that 375 at the next notes conversion so whatever the price is they're paying market price just like anybody else would all they're doing is taking the time out and letting you if you were

SPEAKER_60: going to raise a million start with 37 already accounted for that's incredibly helpful once you get to 37 40 50 percent of your round close the other half closes 99 easier right it's all about momentum

SPEAKER_64: the first 30 40 is the hardest the last 20 30 is like it closes immediately it'd be like you saying like there's two tickets left for tonight's warriors game it's like i'll take them right you know when there's like the whole arena is empty it's like okay i'll wait and see how this goes yeah so it's just

SPEAKER_03: not intellectually correct the first point okay point two why combinator will coach and mentor you

SPEAKER_67: sure okay ryan goes on to say my yc founder friends say the advice is minimal there are rushed office hours generic advice why combinator is a machine and going deep with the founder is basically impossible

SPEAKER_32: by design this is uh i've heard this from many founders who say the program is cookie cutter the knowledge is now available you know on this vegan startups on every other podcast on quora this is directionally correct and it's a function of so this is his strongest part of his argument you don't go to yc for their advice the advice is minimal because unlike when yc started the advice is all

SPEAKER_01: available on the on the internet everybody's written so many startup books everybody's done so many core questions it's like the information's out there and the office hours uh i do hear that

SPEAKER_32: they're rushed because they have so many partners i'm sorry they have so many companies that it's

Jason Calacanis: just very diluted so this is probably true and he also talks about in relation to yc's name raising

SPEAKER_67: valuation by more than 10 to 14 percent that part of the problem is the batch size is 400 which seems

Jason Calacanis: to get to both of those issues right potentially the valuation thing because they're just pumping them out by the hundreds literally and how could you possibly give personalized advice they have

SPEAKER_60: their class size is too big to use this is why i only did seven in the launch accelerator classes i think we've done 24 now or 20 24 classes of seven because i was like i just don't want to

SPEAKER_87: i don't want to have what is a giant restaurant i don't i don't want to run like the like an olive garden cheesecake factory or olive garden you know like if i'm going to do a restaurant i want it

SPEAKER_64: to be a seven eight seat sushi bar and i want it to be high end so that's why i did seven i also don't want to put my name on 400 things but yc is a machine and it is trying to use its brand to scale and to try to very quickly find as many unicorns as possible and they have taken a portfolio approach this is ryan's strongest argument it is correct and as you would say molly and what do you want to say and and and still probably worth the seven percent right because they do in fact make you more than

SPEAKER_88: seven percent more valuable so even though it's less intimate even though it's a machine even

Jason Calacanis: though they accept too many companies still worth it so this is interesting too because uh then his third belief number three right so if we want to go back to the five points yes belief number three why combinator will put you in front of hundreds of investors at demo day that's true he's like yeah sure that happens but no it's not unique nearly every accelerator does this including for example ours and there's only seven of you so he says sure yc maybe has more investors but it is simultaneously the hardest accelerator to stand out in giving the outlandish batch size the demo day is

SPEAKER_32: kind of a joke um but what i will say is they because of their reputation a lot of the new investors uh not the old investors get kind of sweeped up in it so if you're a dentist or a lawyer somebody from outside the industry you kind of have felt like over the last years it's a safe bet to bet on a yc company and so you'll pay a higher price you won't review the documents and you make a quick decision so he's absolutely correct we introduce people to a thousand in well we introduce people to 9500 angels who are members of the the syndicate and we have them on this podcast and they reach a hundred thousand people and probably ten percent of those another ten twenty thousand are investors so it is now no

SPEAKER_62: longer unique their demo day so he's this isn't this is a directionally correct if not correct

Jason Calacanis: criticism yep and what's interesting here is everything has been i would say other than maybe what you're like you're saying you know look the valuation argument is just that's flawed you may have an argument as a ceo that 10 to 15 ownership by a single entity is just too much that seems separate from this but so far yeah he's basically saying i think y combinator is the olive

SPEAKER_67: garden and is not as good as you think it is but now we get calories but it's calories exactly so

Jason Calacanis: then we have our belief number four okay which is where we start to get into more mob stuff yc will help you sell into yc this part says ryan is actually true hashtag the mob if your startup

SPEAKER_00: sells to other startups they have a monopoly on this so yeah so is this half true not true um i've heard from founders it's annoying that people believe this because somebody comes up with an enterprise

SPEAKER_32: product and then they start hitting every yc company up will you use our product use a product and then one of the nefarious things and um i'll just say i've heard this and you know i'm not making

SPEAKER_00: any accusations here but when people do diligence on a yc company it might be wise and people have told

SPEAKER_32: me to discount their sales numbers or to drill into them and find out if there's a little favor bank going on here where let's say 10 yc companies pay for your product you pay for their product this is called round tripping in the industry it's a little known but this is why in diligence you and i have been through this in your first month here i've said or you actually witnessed me having a conversation with kelly which was did you talk to three customers and it was that sas product i won't say which one that was a little hard to understand and it would have been easier if we had talked to the customers but it's a back-end software product so therefore it's not like you on the web

SPEAKER_60: and see how people are using it and if you do drill in on a yc company and they have 10 customers and you find out seven of them are from yc i would discount all seven yeah okay so i would say those

SPEAKER_09: seven don't count baby mob it'd be like it's not much just a club look it's a club let's call it what

SPEAKER_123: it is right but it would be not necessarily clubs not every club is the mob the mob is a club but not every club is a mob you know when i grew up in brooklyn every club is a mob a lot of the mob

SPEAKER_88: they would have like uh italian american heritage club uh that would be this you know saint this

SPEAKER_173: person club the columbus club you know there were clubs so it was a card club yeah it's the one columbus i'm not throwing any aspersions on the italian american community they take care of each other i did my ya-ya impersonation on all in last week and people were gonna cancel me after that

SPEAKER_177: not even gonna lie had a lot of cringe on the dog walk over that one i was like oh no no no no no

SPEAKER_178: am i not allowed to do my italian accent don't bring that here don't bring that here see also the pre-show

SPEAKER_180: conversation regarding the 80s i think i can i can't do an italian grandmother conversation okay i

SPEAKER_183: mean i thought i could i know a lot of italian grandmas save it for the other save it for the other

SPEAKER_184: show so anyway um but this is something that other startups do so i've trained all my people

SPEAKER_32: always ask the source of the first 10 customers and you would be uh i would never be surprised if the first three customers were your sorority sister fraternity brothers who are working at jp morrigan

SPEAKER_01: or goldman sachs and they did you favor by putting on their corporate card or trying it not not illegal

SPEAKER_32: maybe not even unethical if you if your fraternity brother was at goldman and you might be able to get your sas product into goldman through them that's just a contact that's just hustling and networking yeah but if you don't use the product and then you're using that data to go sell an investor is it a honest representation of reality probably not if they're not using the product now if they use

SPEAKER_64: the product and it's landed and expanded yes so this is where it's a very nuanced conversation and um

Jason Calacanis: yeah i mean this is what i think is so brilliant about this thread overall is that it's all kind of it's just like how you squint right it's true depending on how you look at it like some versions of it are true and what he's essentially pointing out here is why combinator has a lot of power and i have had people come to me like i think i was telling you guys i had a venture capitalist years ago be like i think you should take a look at why combinator and whether it's a net negative for the valley in general because every once something has enough influence yeah and power then of course they can seem like the bully in the room and it doesn't mean they didn't build that influence legitimately

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SPEAKER_32: up for free what i respect about y-combinator is unlike harvard which has the same number of students graduating i think what y-combinator started was hey listen if we have six people go through this program and it's such a good program and it helps founders so much why don't we try for 60 why don't we try for 100 so that's kind of cool that they did try to scale it and let more people have access to it if they only accepted seven forever and those people all raised 10 million coming out of the program you'd be like well why don't they let more people in yeah why don't they let more people of color in why don't they let more women in they actually have funded and this is where you have to give them a lot of credit but because they've scaled they've funded more international more women more people of color more underrepresented founders than anybody now you could take a negative view of that and say on a percentage basis yada yada but net numbers and blah blah blah well

SPEAKER_01: there's always give and take there's always given take the numbers are tremendous and this is if i was running my comment i'd say okay here's the number of female founders we've invested in would anybody like to put their numbers against ours because it would be embarrassing because if they've

SPEAKER_00: had to that i think they've had maybe 2 000 people go through the program to date they're doing 400 a year now and they were doing 100 before somebody can fact check maybe it's got to be in the thousands

SPEAKER_01: now so let's say it's 3 000 if 10 of 3 000 were female founders that's 300 female founders funded you could take the top 10 venture firms combine their female founders together it would be 100. you're

SPEAKER_64: not getting those numbers you're not getting those numbers and they're investing early which is the hardest deal to make so you've got to give y combinator a lot of credit for being inclusive even though people would like to say they're not inclusive yeah because you're looking at percentage

Jason Calacanis: not real numbers and then finally ryan says uh point number five is that he says yc will connect you with peers at the same stage his response to that is tech is a very welcoming community not for everyone but sure tech is a very welcoming community he says with a little work this is easy but it's certainly not worth any equity in your company

SPEAKER_37: what do you think about that i mean sure right making friends isn't necessarily but it's it's icing

SPEAKER_35: on the cake it's not the cake but again going back to harvard and yale aren't the networks

SPEAKER_32: don't you join a hundred percent is why you do that when yc was in public the network was extremely

SPEAKER_00: valuable yeah now tech is a very welcoming community ryan's accurate in 2022 he would be

SPEAKER_44: inaccurate 15 years ago because when i came or even like 20 30 years when i came into the industry

SPEAKER_00: even as a white guy the fact that i was from brooklyn and didn't have a you know degree from harvard or oh you know or stanford or something like that it was kind of like you really belong here

Jason Calacanis: or not you know and i would say tech is more welcoming much more i don't think that necessarily

SPEAKER_32: always means it's very i would compare it to other industries as a fair one so would you say it's

SPEAKER_00: easier to make it in tech or hollywood tech okay would you say tech or finance is there a difference

SPEAKER_01: these days well like wall street we are working at goldman as an investment banker verse you know tech okay tech versus i don't know the media becoming a journalist

Jason Calacanis: that's it you know what because tech has made media and becoming a journalist more accessible i would

SPEAKER_123: say they are almost even and it is the result of right like there's a sub stack youtube channels

SPEAKER_67: podcasting but look getting hired by the new york times and or even if you get hired they're being

Jason Calacanis: respected by the new york times you know like it being for example from the middle of the country and working on the west coast and then getting accepted by the new york media mafia yeah

SPEAKER_62: tech is still easier okay so we just have three uh politics or tech easier to break into tech so i

SPEAKER_64: would argue so i just picked three top industries media finance and i i would say tech is more welcoming mainly because of technology right like chat rooms podcasting whatever so it's the tools that

Jason Calacanis: make it that way and frankly that i think is what ryan is saying too is like with a little work you can join the like this we can start up slack channel for founders and you know get to know

SPEAKER_67: everybody be part of the notie gang like be part of the notie gang you're in a world trading more

SPEAKER_237: emails with walton dormish than half my staff i mean he emails me more than yeah the most optimistic

SPEAKER_214: hustler on the internet is walton dornish absolutely like nothing i've ever seen he's just like a con he's like a support machine yes incredible tech is about what you what what is your skill what can you

SPEAKER_44: get done what have you done a lot of the other industries are about who you know let's be honest

Jason Calacanis: hollywood you know and credentials yeah and fundamentally about credentials and i think tech was built in theory to be less about credit well and then also it was co-opted by a bunch of like stanford guys so it's you know everything is a give and take but yes 100 to that point where he's basically saying tech is democratic enough that you don't need to give away 15 of your company

SPEAKER_67: for a community i'll give him that one that's a that's a gimme so net net in all of this are is

SPEAKER_00: there any else thing to the argument we need to even go so then he ends no but here's his four key

Jason Calacanis: pieces of advice to new founders on how to build a network and raise money it's like ryan's accelerator in one tweet one hustle to make friends with other founders two host social meetups to turn friends

SPEAKER_67: into more friends three start building something differentiated and four leverage your network when

SPEAKER_32: it's time to race great advice i talk about it in my book about how to build a network not everybody's an extrovert not everybody's designed for this not everybody enjoys it yep so great he is obviously an extrovert communicator so for him he has a bias towards this i have a bias towards this i've met many founders who are very successful who the idea of hustling to make friends like they don't want to invite people to dinner and you know host the dinner and then talk to people and try to hustle like the idea of hustling to make friends i would say for the majority of people is not something they're designed to do well so i think his advice is for like a third of people exactly i totally agree

Jason Calacanis: it's so interesting because you know as we get into the rogan conversation and simultaneously there's a conversation happening in our chat right now that is basically about empathy right try it please try to understand my point of view so that i can i'll try to understand your point of view and like ryan breslow is giving advice that works for some people but not for everybody and yc is an accelerator that works for some companies and not for all of them and it's i mean it literally is just

SPEAKER_123: like can't we all just go obviously there was a response from y combinator at long last no surprise paul graham finally uh responded paul graham's retired i think he does show up for he what paul graham's

SPEAKER_231: kind of retired i respect paul graham for this as well kind of went to europe retired and uh still gives

SPEAKER_87: advice and i see him when i used to go a couple years ago to y combinator demodus he would actually show up for it so i have a lot of respect for paul graham as well i think he's like actually in it for the right reasons and i respect him for handing it off to folks and then going and raising his family and and yeah cashing in his chips listen as a founder it's really hard to find the time to become a

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SPEAKER_259: memberships once again get marlo.com twist to get 15 off i mean i guess what i think is interesting is

Jason Calacanis: that we are also at a point where as you examine all these questions about accelerators and heaven help us that includes ours you can ask yourself to some extent right because let me make the point first that yc alumni have now started a blockchain based dow called orange dow to invest in crypto startups there was a seminar over the weekend about whether investment dow's are in fact themselves the future of vc so we're starting to see almost you know and this is a conversation that's come and gone over the years like is crowdfunding and now crowdfunding through dow's which yc itself is even dabbling with the future of vc and or the competition to an accelerator or early stage vc if you don't care about all of these other sort of slightly less obvious benefits you're just

SPEAKER_32: trading one selection process for another and so with crowdfunding you're saying a bunch of people writing hundred dollar to thousand dollar checks make a better decision than people who do it full time for a living and who see the top companies and who have great deal flow the answer to that is obviously no and then here you're saying okay a bunch of people who join this dow who put in

SPEAKER_64: three e third you know one bitcoin are going to make better decisions collectively possibly i think what the the best function of these groups and listen we run a dow called the syndicate.com it's just not crypto based and there's no voting on what companies uh go to it people vote with their dollars if they want to fund it so i think it's kind of similar most similar analogous to syndicates but dow's are illegal in the united states you cannot just take random people's money

SPEAKER_206: and for and invest in companies it is illegal to really salient point that's really if this was

SPEAKER_273: legal i'd be doing it you don't think i want to get my hands on that crypto money wait but how is it

SPEAKER_274: then that yc can start this blockchain based out they're all experimenting i jumped into the latest

SPEAKER_62: dow thing last night that they had a conversation on twitter spaces and they're like if you want to

SPEAKER_64: show interest and if you want to vote for people who are pro dows and everybody thinks dows are legals because somewhere in montana they have a framework for dow's they're all what's called

SPEAKER_01: laos llc based house which means they're doing the exact same spv structure that angel list the

SPEAKER_32: syndicate my syndicate everybody else's syndicate uses assure.com assure.co provides they're all doing an llc spv which has limitations 250 members 10 million dollars invested it has to be accredited investors you have to know who they are you have to have a relationship with them you have to if it's 506c which all these dow's are 506 means it's publicly raising you have to know who that you have to then certify if it's public that they're actually accredited the reason why other dow's did not get censored or had legal action is because when they went to buy the constitution they said we're gonna we are going to buy the constitution they didn't say you are going to own the constitution and they kind of actually probably broke the law a little bit in that one because they were tweeting like hey let's buy the constitution the fact is what you were doing was you were donating for them to buy the constitution and then they were promising to do something like put it in a museum or something gotcha so if you actually want to take investors money and then return more and give them shares and ownership and something you got to play by the sec's rules and

SPEAKER_129: the sec rules are you got to be accredited 250 people per spv and you got to be registered and you

Jason Calacanis: can't break 10 million so yc alumni i may have misspoken there and said that yc was starting it we should try to get um it's it's co-led by ben hugh of course of okay so this is another rub meme

SPEAKER_64: invention phase fame people who went to what is another rub to all of this the alumni of the alumni like harvard alumni will say harvard alumni investment club that's not harvard and there's another thing yc has had a little bit of a challenge with is alumni will leave and say we have special access to yc companies and we'll get you into them early and they'll and there was somebody who had a yc i think angelist had a mob kind of mobby right so you know the if you really want to go after the mob behavior in y combinator the place to look would be why do 20 companies suddenly raise their money before demo day even though yc tells you not to raise money before demo day and they wind up not presenting on demo day and that's because yc has always given the inside track all the aces and kings in the deck go to yc partners and other venture firms i know this because people have told me that they get tipped off by other yc partners and of course they do if you're a bunch if you're a yc partner and you see some great company you're like this is the next airbnb of course you're going to invest in it of course you're going to get reserve your ticket of course you're going to develop a relationship founder and if you have a relationship with some other venture firm of course you're

Jason Calacanis: going to tip them off yeah and of course you're going to get some company to come along and buy your company that's not doing that well so you can get your returns and i mean look it's a whole it is no conflict no interest no conflict no interest this is the opposite of everything you

SPEAKER_296: learned in journalism i mean it's fun as hell for me like just shedding the layers one by one just like

SPEAKER_208: okay i guess yeah what edge do you have press your edge it's bad i mean you watch tv show billions

SPEAKER_01: totally have you watched the tv show billions where they're always trying to get an edge and they're like okay how can we make this trade it's like okay yeah let's poison let's put bacteria in

SPEAKER_32: these in this juice company so we tank their stock so people get a coli and we'll like that was like the theme of the first season i think is like some juice companies going public and and they basically

SPEAKER_221: do any cola breakout to tank the stock because they shorted it and whatever and it's like that's

SPEAKER_305: illegal yeah businesses but is it illegal for you to have a friend who's at yc who tells you you

Jason Calacanis: should invest in this company of course not i mean if it's illegal the entire american sphere of influence you know based economy is going to go away overnight and it's that's not gonna happen so

SPEAKER_64: here's what i say if you're a founder first-time founder and you get into yc go take the money and go your company will become worth more than seven percent and if they put the extra 300 in you're

SPEAKER_87: going to take that from somebody else it's a no-brainer to go if you're a serial founder and

SPEAKER_60: you've got your own million dollars that you can back your company with or the first 250k will do

SPEAKER_64: that of course and then push out your first financing but if it's your first company and you got a co-founder you'll wind up owning 20 percent 15 when you go public like larry page did and sergey

SPEAKER_129: brandon will be okay or airbnb did you'll be just fine if you own seven to 15 of a google airbnb

SPEAKER_313: yeah kind of how it works same goes for lunch by the way same goes for our accelerator or tech stars

SPEAKER_32: you know like i i we really don't have to sell ours too hard because we only accept seven and we're

SPEAKER_44: always over subscribed so it's not a big deal yeah very true but i have a new strategy i'm i'm working on too because we had bested yc's deal and i have a new strategy i'm working on that you know about which we'll announce in maybe in 30 days of how we're going to best their better deal uh so just put a pin

Jason Calacanis: in that because always find your edge and then press it there you go um we're putting some bacteria in yc's juice just kidding no we're not no we're not doing that i am really proud of us by the way because we have gone fully 40 minutes into this podcast maybe it won't sound that way when you hear it edited but it's taken us this long yeah to actually get to the story that dominated most of the weekend yeah which was of course joe rogan and spotify all right here we go everybody wants to

SPEAKER_47: hear about this one molly what did you say last week i think we should start with your clip from last week can we start with that okay producers i just feel like that is the most salient thing we

Jason Calacanis: have to say here that is very true we had this conversation last week and and jason as he is want to do was like what would you do molly and i was like oh wait here's what i would do honestly i guess what i would do is just put a label on it like this isn't this is con like they do on uh editorials

SPEAKER_67: on tv or something like this is not endorsed by spotify right this is our or i wouldn't have a

SPEAKER_215: problem with that if they said this this show has disputed claims here are some here are those disputed podcasts and linked to them like that's kind of what facebook is trying to do walk the line

SPEAKER_31: i don't think joe rogan would have a problem with that i think he would want to actually hear where he's

SPEAKER_32: wrong yeah i think actually he would nailed it nailed it so the news broke this weekend that spotify

SPEAKER_38: would link to their content terms which i think they previously didn't have a policy i mean they

Jason Calacanis: did not like spotify we will get to in a minute has done essentially everything wrong here okay and one of the things that they had didn't do is have a published policy despite by their own admission having removed over 30 000 podcasts that weren't joe rogan related to coven 19 misinformation specifically got it so they had a policy but wouldn't even tell like you know the media of course was calling them and wouldn't even say what their policy was so step one is that they are actually going to publish it step two they're going to put up this label just like we suggested makes sense any podcast episode that includes a discussion about covet 19 will get a label and advisory that will direct listeners to spotify's dedicated covet 19 hub a resource that provides easy access to data driven facts up-to-date information as shared by scientists physicians academics and public health authorities around the world as well as links to trusted sources

SPEAKER_54: perfect and then now people if they want to have the debate of what now the next debate is what's a

SPEAKER_32: trusted source so now you can go to that page and be like i don't trust the world health organization or i don't trust voucher or whatever but at least they're pointing you to trusted

SPEAKER_64: sources like scientists i mean that's a lot better than comedians or quack doctors or anything in

Jason Calacanis: between yeah definitely now it still does not spotify still has not answered or i think probably dealt with to the satisfaction of its critics well of neil young and joni mitchell and br i mean people keep glossing over this but brene brown stopped publishing her exclusive deal podcast indefinitely on

David Friedberg: she's a big deal right she's a big it's a big deal it's not my content but she's like a personal

SPEAKER_37: help guru yeah like for people who aren't joe rogan fans brene brown is the joe rogan right like

Jason Calacanis: there's like there it's a very competing sort of self-help universe got it yeah and uh prince harry and megan have been putting pressure on spotify because they signed questions they had exclusive deal they they said publicly that they have questions behind the scenes i would assume those questions are how you can fix this yeah and spotify has not exactly dealt with like they put out a statement that was very facebook-esque right we don't want to be in the position to censor content this and that but what they haven't acknowledged i think probably satisfactorily is that it's that they commissioned exclusive content like they're they're the exclusive publisher here of this content and so they do possibly they're they're joe rogan's boss like this is as one friend put it to me this weekend this is a talent management question because they did the stuff so it is and it isn't there's something

SPEAKER_00: between producing the show and buying the rights to publish a pre-done show so let me explain the sort of difference there there are some people who choose to make the totality of their show and

SPEAKER_01: then say you can license it yeah you can you can take it if you want but you have no involvement of

SPEAKER_32: the production of and that's the relationship they have with joe rogan then there's their in-house production team which they just shut down which uh the person who used to produce this podcast was actually running i think it was called studio four or something and then they also have the ringer they bought the ringer the ringer has editors and producers so in that way they own the production company which means they are in fact producing it but with is it brene brown am i pronouncing brown yeah brene brown pretty i believe produces her own show with her people who she pays whatever she

SPEAKER_64: wants to and then they get her episode so they just publish the episode and they have exclusive rights to monetize it and sell ads on it that's relationship with joe rogan it's distinctly different they're licensing ip yeah that means they are not allowed to go into it and start editing and cutting it whereas

SPEAKER_32: if they were producing it in-house they are explicitly doing that they are constructing so let's just you'll understand there's two different oh i understand that there's yes i'm very familiar

SPEAKER_35: i don't know the audience does though i'm just not sure everybody's okay not me right yeah i know you

Jason Calacanis: know and i think that is a that is a super important thing to say which is that spotify is not producing or creating they are not involved in the editorial creation of this product however unlike other podcast deals right unlike facebook even unlike youtube spotify is not the sort of like a neutral conduit for this content that could be found everywhere else right so they have a different level of responsibility facebook and youtube themselves had already blurred the line and they were already trying to sort of claim that they were the platform and not the publisher and that was already a little bit messy because of algorithms and youtube has a studio where they encourage and pay creators but in the case of spotify it's a much more one-to-one and the thing that became in like the sort of intellectual exercise i was having over the weekend is like at what point like could spotify end up ruining everything for everyone by getting the fcc involved here because the fcc for example does content has content regulation over broadcast and so far they have totally sidestepped questions of the internet right they're like no we are only responsible because we control the spectrums like it's all about the specific type of communication subscription services don't apply but like you wonder if this starts to become the thing where it's like i have a lens for

SPEAKER_361: that actually you're the publisher yeah not i'm by the way stop your freaking tweets i'm not advocating

SPEAKER_32: this yeah no it is like an insight of where this could well you just predicted essentially perfectly what spotify would do and you're kind of i think predicting directionally what a government agency might do and here's how you can determine if somebody's a publisher and i talked about this i think on we were having a discussion about like uh this just last week a publisher publishes the content right they

SPEAKER_01: make it available they promote it and they monetize it and in some cases they produce it so here you have them doing everything but the production of the content they are promoting it they do ads for joe rogan they promote it they put it in the top of the app they make the artwork they're promoting it

SPEAKER_215: they monetize it they capture the money off of it and they pay for it sorry that was the piece i left

SPEAKER_366: out so they pay for it if you are involved in that kind of revenue sharing relationship and you're

SPEAKER_32: involved in the promotion of it you're the publisher even if you don't make it because they have the

SPEAKER_62: veto right yeah so whether the veto right comes after you get the episode or it comes during the production of the episode you still got the veto right and i think they have a different level of

SPEAKER_32: responsibility than say they do for this week in startups which they don't monetize the show they

Jason Calacanis: don't have the rights to it they don't promote it fine and to that point about veto power and this is where like things just get a little continue to get a little messy for spotify spotify vetoed when rogan went to exclusive yeah on spotify they immediately removed about 40 episodes from his 1000 episode feed which included people like interviews like alex jones milo yiannopoulos chuck johnson they removed episodes uh including interviews with a convicted rapist serving life in prison a comedian who was accused of soliciting child porn from a teen girl so what i am trying to say is spotify has exercised veto power in the past it has removed tens of thousands of podcasts from its own directory over covet 19 misinformation and it has carved a big old loophole for joe rogan and i just doubt that from uh i think it's only a matter of time before like legislators come in here right like this is i don't think this has solved their problem the labels i think you know and then in fairness to um joe rogan

SPEAKER_32: the people who were convicted of crimes and all that kind of stuff like uh war machine and stuff like that they were on before those convictions happened so it was kind of like do we want this

SPEAKER_44: archive episode so it would be like we're not going to include bill cosby shows or you know but they

SPEAKER_69: made an editorial call they made an editorial call to not take those yes and yeah so then i think we the

SPEAKER_32: next piece of this puzzle is to go to joe rogan actually uh gave some feedback on his approach to

SPEAKER_64: the show which i think kind of defended my position which has always been he's a comedian he just has a rambling three-hour conversation and you should not really take any of this as anything more than a rambling conversation that might be a starting point for you to do your own research so let's hear some parts of uh his clip i think let's see because he doesn't he explains the situation and then i think a relevant clip is rogan talks about his problems with the claims of misinformation let's listen to

SPEAKER_87: that here because nobody's talking about specifically what the misinformation is i think

SPEAKER_384: his position on this is important the problem i have with the term misinformation especially today is that many of the things that we thought of as misinformation just a short while ago are now accepted as fact like for instance eight months ago if you said if you get vaccinated you can still catch covid and you can still spread covid you would be removed from social media they would they would ban you from certain platforms now that's accepted as fact if you said i don't think cloth masks work you would be banned from social media now that's openly and repeatedly stated on cnn if you said i think it's possible that covid 19 came from a lab you'd be banned from many social media platforms now that's

SPEAKER_00: on the cover of newsweek what are you sure thought on you know these the moving target of a pandemic

SPEAKER_32: which is a unique situation like he is not wrong that the advice from a year ago would be radically different in the omicron era or that the lab leak theory went from being like you get banned from

SPEAKER_80: social media talking about it now most people believe that's kind of the likely scenario i mean i

Jason Calacanis: think four to five of those things are just actual lies which piece like at no point would you get banned first of all this question of banned from social media is a whole other right what does that

SPEAKER_387: even mean like if you're losing your account like people lost their accounts or had them turned off

Jason Calacanis: for 60 days nobody saying everyone knows that no vaccine like that like the flu vaccine you could still get the flu and you could still potentially right like doctors were saying this is how vaccines work now were you saying the vaccine doesn't work you're still going to get sick and spread it to everybody so don't take it i just think like that there's a little playing there's a little like defensive i this is such a terrible mistake like even getting into the joe rogan content from my side but like yeah i think that that's it's an interesting attempt to have it both ways i kind of feel like i might be

SPEAKER_390: taking the other this might be a situation where we have different opinions on this because i kind of

SPEAKER_32: feel like in a moving target like this i would i would err on the side of having more information

Jason Calacanis: and i look at your every platform has platforms have not been out here just wholesale nuking people i think that fundamentally is what is the big lie

SPEAKER_64: you are correct a lot of people have not lost their accounts over this you it would be the most extreme people saying don't get exactly the vaccine it's got microchips in it exactly like look

Jason Calacanis: at who has actually been banned versus the claim like if you say this you'll be banned no thousands

SPEAKER_62: of q anon accounts went away sure yes those were the ones that the people talking about the microchip

SPEAKER_60: yeah interestingly i said when we had our discussion i think like rogan wouldn't have a problem i think he's i kind of consider him in the tim ferris vein although he i think tim is a little more considered and joe takes like if tim ferris takes like this um i've got my hands like the size of a grapefruit a big one like if he takes this much risk in terms of booking guests now like my hands are like a watermelon like joe will have almost anybody on who's interesting do audiences understand that i thought they did but maybe they don't here rogan explains in this quick 40 second clip that uh he

SPEAKER_87: gets things wrong and he has no problem correcting himself which i i would think we would already know

SPEAKER_384: let's play that one all of those theories that at one point in time were banned were openly discussed by those two men that i had on my podcast that have been accused of dangerous misinformation i do not know if they're right i don't know because i'm not a doctor i'm not a scientist i'm just a person who sits down and talks to people and has conversations with them do i get things wrong absolutely i get things wrong but i try to correct them whenever i get something wrong i try to correct it because i'm interested in telling the truth i'm interested in finding out what the truth is and i'm interested in having interesting conversations with people that have differing opinions i'm not interested in only

SPEAKER_211: talking to people that have one perspective okay i think we knew that already um i don't i i'm at a loss for people not putting rogan show in perspective like yeah that's the part where i think like

SPEAKER_406: yeah from the rogan people in your app matches i can see you're like huh boy my app matches are

Jason Calacanis: gonna have a lot of rogan supporters look i mean it is it is it is really a luxury to like if influence didn't exist one of america's biggest industries wouldn't be marketing and advertising if industry if influence didn't exist we wouldn't have we'd be out of a job like it's willfully and luxuriously naive considering the volume of people who cite joe rogan as their hero right like this guy is in the status of tesla apple playstation versus microsoft like he has a cultish fan base so the idea that it is credible that people are not taking joe rogan seriously we are not a nation of spocks out here taking information in and being like fascinating that's not what's happening and we know it and he knows it because he got paid whatever however many hundred tens of millions what a hundred million dollars to go to spotify it would be lovely to believe that the way america works is that people are out here taking in information and then doing their own research and they're coming to reasonable conclusions and if that were true we wouldn't have 2500 covid deaths yesterday from among almost

SPEAKER_47: exclusively unvaccinated people right and so this is where with great power comes great responsibility

SPEAKER_01: and he's not taking it i don't see him well yeah so i think he started today maybe that's what the point of this i think that's what this moment is is maybe joe rogan realizing geez i got a lot of

SPEAKER_32: influence and as you're correctly pointing out getting 100 million dollars is spotify confirming he's got a lot of influence where they would not have given 100 million dollars because that 100 million dollars they have to make back in 500 000 people paying for the service over the next

Jason Calacanis: two or three years to be just some doofy idiot yeah we have all been put into a position where we take responsibility for the things that we say and so the fast and loose yeah production style

SPEAKER_64: doesn't work anymore for him no he should be more considered and thoughtful is i think what everybody is saying so let's play this clip where the clip number four where he talks about what he can do better and the disclaimer that you correctly pointed out would be coming one of the things that spotify

SPEAKER_383: wants to do that i agree with is that at the beginning of these controversial podcasts like

SPEAKER_384: specifically ones about covid is to put a disclaimer and say that you should speak with your physician and that these people and the opinions that they express are contrary to the opinions of uh the consensus of experts which i think is very important sure have that on there i'm very happy with that i think if there's anything that i've done that i could do better is uh have more experts with differing opinions right after i have the controversial ones i would most certainly be open to doing that

SPEAKER_64: so that's a good thought here's another idea in the original days of podcasting you have a guest on

SPEAKER_01: you talk you publish maybe if you get that big of an audience and it's about science you have a science editor listen to the pod and maybe you do a little preamble before the pod starts and say in this podcast at 40 minutes in this person makes this claim i talked to three doctors after the pod went

SPEAKER_32: out and here's what they said three out of three doctors disagree with him and here's why they disagree with him and i'm going to have one of those doctors on episode 1500 so in two weeks you'll hear that so you could actually do some work after the pod is taped to do a little fact checking of what

Jason Calacanis: people said that's actually i that's what i would do if i spotify it's funny because you had the idea for basically a round table like a panel of fact checkers almost like a what's that walking dead spin-off show that's sort of like talking dead a talking dead but for joe rogan and he essentially just like proposed the same thing similar yeah which at some point you know what i mean it's kind of funny because what you're watching here is joe rogan start to um ask questions that what like journalism like hmm if i hear a thing maybe i should if i hear a thing from a single source maybe yeah i should have some other sources yeah who can either confirm or deny that thing

SPEAKER_32: yes and that and listen the poc the problem with the podcasting format sam harris did a podcast where he talked about not having brett weinstein on his podcast anymore and brett has kind of gone off the

SPEAKER_01: deep end i think most people would agree kind of like in the anti-vax kind of area and uh he was like

SPEAKER_64: he basically sam harris who's a friend of mine chose to do the opposite of what joe rogan is doing he's like i said i don't want to platform people at this moment in time where the vaccine people are on vaccinated are getting killed because i can't in real time fact check the person and then we get into

SPEAKER_211: this like what is truth conversation and that is one of the problems because right if the if the who

SPEAKER_64: is a politicized organization now or a fauci you know did try to cover up the lab leak thing or there's some conspiracy theory there or if it actually turns out to be reality who knows did we fund gain of function i'm sure we did did we do with the intent of creating a pandemic obviously not

SPEAKER_290: so like you have all these possibilities but you can't in a podcast edit in real time like podcasting

Jason Calacanis: does have limitations as a format it does definitely i think that even facebook and twitter like the thing that ultimately pushed these platforms to make these content decisions is that at some point you don't again when our per capita infections and deaths are so outrageous compared to the rest of the world right when our that when it's a genuine public health crisis when you have people saying and people who are are sincerely being misled by the act of just asking questions when you have a guy in the news today who was like i declined a kidney transplant that i need to stay alive because they were going to make me get the vaccine yeah to get a new kidney right like the bar is higher than this sort of simple question of like i'm just out here asking questions i'm just having conversations i will say i give joe rogan a lot of credit for acknowledging the conversation like i in in today's america i was frankly shocked that he didn't just dig right in because he has always been controversial he has always like yes invited people on to just have a conversation and engage in some like intellectual back and forth and that was like kind of okay when again 2500 people we are two-thirds of the way to the peak of american deaths per day yeah before a vaccine yeah and

SPEAKER_342: it's all unvaccinated people like 98 99 98 or or it's my mother who is vaccinated and totally

SPEAKER_67: immunocompromised and is put at severe danger by the fact that this pandemic in this country is like

SPEAKER_448: never gonna it i give joe rogan a lot of credit because this last group of people refused to get

SPEAKER_450: vaccinated right it's not a small group we're like 30 percent of the country four percent thirty six

SPEAKER_206: percent of the shots yeah and then like something like 20 or 30 percent boosted right like it's yeah

Jason Calacanis: it's a challenge it is a genuine public health crisis and so it's just not you can't just sort of

SPEAKER_44: say like i'm just talking over here so which has led i think a lot of people now to be like if you're

SPEAKER_00: i hate to say this but if if your risk assessment i'm gonna say it in a kind way if your risk

SPEAKER_32: assessment is so poor that you don't take the vaccine i mean i don't know what i can do at this point like how could you be looking at the statistics of 99 of the deaths or whatever it is

SPEAKER_388: it's way into the 90s and i you know i wish we had exact but then like how hard would it be for

Jason Calacanis: joe rogan to be like hey dr malone 99 of the deaths are among the unvaccinated right that's

SPEAKER_35: what i mean when i say hammering that home that would be more responsible that would be like just say get the vaccine that's why i find it not credible that you're just you're just intellectually

Jason Calacanis: curious still like no you're not right you're you're embracing some kind of like you're taking the money the fame and the attention is very comfortable i the great i saw a large audience thing the other day that was like joe rogan at this point is closer to rush limbaugh than howard stern right because there was a void there there's this audience that's super fired up and very eager to embrace a voice like that i think joe rogan just realized and i give him a lot of credit for putting out a video where he's like i realized that this train has gotten a little out of my control because

SPEAKER_465: most people are just digging in and being like double barrel people i'm doing what i want

SPEAKER_32: so good for him he actually said something similar to what i said back in october he said this it would be better to get the virus and recover and have amazing immunity rogan said of the podcast you know what i think you should do i think you should get vaccinated and then get sick this is why because then you got the vaccine protects you from a bad infection and then you get covid so then you get the robust immunity that is imparted from having the actual disease itself that's a quote from his podcast which is kind of i didn't say it exactly like that but i did say i think the ultimate protection is being triple vaxxed then you get it and you get the weakest version and then you have

SPEAKER_44: the natural immunity too and then you're kind of on the side so i don't know it's because he

SPEAKER_468: produces so much content and he talks about this so much it's also very hard to get a handle because

SPEAKER_388: you're talking about three-hour podcast rambling talking about this right i mean listen i he's vaxxed

SPEAKER_38: too right he's not anti-vaxx the real i don't i don't know i know that when he i think when he got covid he said that he uh took ivermectin he did say that he yeah i mean i'm not an anti-vax person

Jason Calacanis: there's an opportunity again to look i am of the firm belief that this is mostly a spotify story that okay it is relate it is very it is very much about rogan and the fact that he has a huge audience and a ton of influence and you know for all the people who are like if you're getting your advice from joe rogan like you're just not paying attention to how influence and media works and

SPEAKER_476: has always my position which is like he's a comedian like he hosted fear factor but you are

SPEAKER_64: right he's at scale we know what i'm coming around to your position which is he's at scale he's at scale

SPEAKER_60: and when you're at scale you have a different responsibility and he should rise to the occasion

SPEAKER_47: hopefully this is him rising to the occasion right and um but to rock mike's point who says i thought

SPEAKER_85: this podcast was about startups i think this is about spotify this is this is about spotify this

Jason Calacanis: is a business story and every single company who's coming up right now does not realize that it's a content company and it is and content moderation i mean we've talked about this before even airbnb yeah even uber right like everything is moderation at this point and if you are going to be a company who is trying to build on the creator economy on you know podcasting on acquiring and distributing content these are the questions that are going to come up and the fact that spotify got into this business without i don't know a published policy without a plan without a moral cause they were moving

SPEAKER_154: fast and breaking exactly and what i'm saying to new companies who want to get in this bin don't wing it this is the defining question now of putting information on the internet and early in the pandemic

SPEAKER_32: he did say you know if a young person is healthy they don't need to get the vaccine i think that was bad advice but he said again that's my advice and what do i know i'm not even a doctor but to your point he's at scale he should be more thoughtful spotify is at scale they should be more

SPEAKER_00: thoughtful so if and i thought his response was thoughtful so and i think he is actually a considered

SPEAKER_32: thoughtful person so i think spotify should demand a little more editorial uh controls from him

SPEAKER_388: and he should demand it of himself let's end with this uh his goals for the show and kind of an

SPEAKER_00: apology he this was sort of an apology unapology it was an explanation apology what do you call that

SPEAKER_68: an explanation apology uh not an apology but yeah but i know he did say the words i'm sorry let's hear you say i'm sorry you feel that way let's hear a clip let's listen

SPEAKER_384: i don't want to just show the the contrary opinion to what the narrative is i want to show all kinds of opinions so that we can all figure out what's going on and not just about covid about everything about health about fitness wellness the state of the world itself it's a strange responsibility to have this many viewers and listeners it's very strange and it's nothing that i prepare for and it's nothing that i ever anticipated i am going to do my best in the future to balance things out i'm going to do my best but my point of doing this is always just to create interesting conversations and ones that i hope people enjoy so if i pissed you off i'm sorry and uh if you enjoy

SPEAKER_32: the podcast thank you rate the apology one to ten sincerity thoughtfulness i find him sincere in this apology but i don't like the if i pissed you off i'm sorry i know i mean it's just an i'm sorry

SPEAKER_37: you feel that way however i'm sorry you're upset molly that this was i know right i'm sorry

SPEAKER_498: you ever have your i'm sorry significant other say that i'm sorry you're so upset your mentions molly

SPEAKER_501: yeah exactly i'm not saying that ever happened to me in a relationship i know i did this terrible thing uh and i'm sorry that i did it i'm probably going to do it again to be clear look overall this

Jason Calacanis: is so much more thoughtful than i frankly this is at least an acknowledgement that there is a burden of responsibility i'm also shocked this dude doesn't seem to have any producers

SPEAKER_01: i think there are no producers of note i think the producers book guests and they might give

SPEAKER_44: him some notes but i don't think there's like a science producer talking about science stuff yeah

SPEAKER_01: oh well he did apologize to spotify so to bring this back to spotify spotify has been growing quickly

SPEAKER_32: they provide a great app but they let's face it suck at content moderation and managing all this stuff

Jason Calacanis: and they need to suck less that's my they need to suck less for their own sake because at one point joe rogan had wiped four billion well you could actually say neil young and joni mitchell and bernie brown and harry and megan had wiped four billion dollars off of spotify's market cap like so when this news broke it did drop the stock yeah yeah four billion dollars at one point well now it's up spotify stock was up as much as 12 as of noon eastern monday um although the the broader market was up as well i mean look yeah i wonder if that had to do with the market stuff or if it was actually

SPEAKER_44: a story i wonder yeah i wonder was that happening during the stock market going down anyway like we have to we would need to know what the overall stock market was doing during that period but it does look like it took a massive dip when that news broke yeah so maybe people were responding to

SPEAKER_211: the news yeah i guess anyway it's they got a great business and getting joe rogan was a brilliant move

SPEAKER_44: i you know i have to say the 100 million they're paying him i think is oh somebody can fact check me on this if they have inside information or something i heard three years some people say five years but let's pick four four years 25 million bucks i think he was probably making 20 15 20 million bucks he probably gets an overage if they break that number so there what they did

SPEAKER_64: with joe rogan was a highly profitable power move i'll explain the math they are almost guaranteed to

SPEAKER_32: get back a large percentage of joe rogan's 100 million dollars in advertising let's say they

SPEAKER_05: get back 75 with 100 million or 50 say 50 so now they're out 50 million spotify costs like 10 bucks a

SPEAKER_44: month eight bucks a month i'm not sure i pay for like a family plan that's 15 i think i think i think

SPEAKER_32: i pay for that too yeah yeah it's pretty good deal actually you get five emails you can share it yeah that's great so if a spotify user is worth let's say 200 over three years just taking a guess

SPEAKER_00: here if you had a million of them that'd be 200 million if you had a quarter million of them it would be 50 million so i think they make their money back and then some and they blocked another

SPEAKER_129: competing service from getting joe rogan the number one podcaster at the time in other words

SPEAKER_211: sometimes when you overpay for something and you block a competitor from having it in the long term

SPEAKER_44: you know you're going to wind up winning that's why like the howard stern deal which made no sense to people on terrestrial radio what they didn't realize was if only one million people pay for the 10 a month 120 a year over three years for howard stern that's 360 bucks that's his contract

SPEAKER_87: price so there are people actually doing the math on the other end of these deals yeah and maybe it's maybe there's 25 million at risk there's not the top line number at risk it's probably 10 or 20

SPEAKER_64: of the total number at risk and for joe rogan he got all that money up front i believe or a significant portion of it took out his downside risk and now he doesn't have to worry about ever having to talk to an advertiser again all the risk was taken out so if he did get cancelled or did make some stupid

SPEAKER_276: mistake he secured the bag and that was i'm sure there is no uh clause in it about like joe rogan's a bad person there's no clause in it like joe rogan said the wrong word or gets cancelled he just gets the money period in a negotiation like that so yeah which is on spotify at the end of the day

SPEAKER_37: like and they'll have to make those and look it may end up being the best business deal like

Jason Calacanis: you know signing all these exclusives might end up being the best business deal that spotify ever made but i'll be very curious to see what the like long-term fallout is of this move into straight up publisher right if they if they if god forbid they call down the fcc on streaming services

SPEAKER_00: who ultimately loses then i think their go i think it'll the downside is so minor of being a publisher

SPEAKER_44: um and i think they explicitly are going into netflix territory i think that's why they bought ringer was to learn from bill simmons who was a savant but also i think it was more for the playbook i'll be honest like the ip they got might be worth half the deal two thirds a deal i think what they really wanted was bill simmons's brain like bill simmons created 30 for 30 grant land all these incredible shows he knows how to manage the talent so much like when aol bought weblogs inc for me they were trying to get the playbook for engadget and joystick so they could do tmz which they owned

SPEAKER_388: half of and other blogs like tmz was a blog they built on our platform so i think they were trying to buy the playbook joe rogan was part of the playbook anchor part of the playbook and what's the other one

David Friedberg: they bought gimlet did they buy gimlet gimlet yeah so just specifically i don't know if they bought

SPEAKER_37: them but they did a say the same like an exclusive maybe they bought them out right i think they're

SPEAKER_32: all one of those they're all spotify employees now because the unions are fighting and it's all goes

SPEAKER_37: up to spotify so spotify it is so interesting because that is exactly what when we were talking

Jason Calacanis: about the amount of money that disney and netflix and hbo i mean it's interesting to think that the competitive competition to them we were like nobody could ever compete now it's such a big moat in terms of their investment in contact content and it is interesting to think about spotify as a

SPEAKER_67: competitor that's sort of like coming in the side gorilla warfare licensing maybe a different type of content but the same eyeballs right the same attention economy your time same your time yeah

SPEAKER_211: thanks justin and now we're part of this uh anchor so if you're watching this on spotify you can press a button if you're listening to the audio stream and then anchor their you know backend technology shows

SPEAKER_64: the video yeah so now they're competing with youtube so now we have our content on youtube and video on spotify so you know people may or may not have a label today we don't know exactly

SPEAKER_47: i don't think they rolled that out just yet here just some math on the stock drop variety report

SPEAKER_129: spotify stock dropped six percent from january 26th to 28th representing 2 billion lost mark have during the same time period tech stocks went down zoom 10 square 15 twilio so it seems like correlation not causation could be a clickbaity headline okay could be yeah could be

SPEAKER_546: i think we did enough show did we do a show r.i.p my mentions even in chat it's all over now time to

SPEAKER_00: go actually one of the things i like about having us co-host is we have a different opinion about this and i actually felt like i learned a little something in our discussion which was i wasn't taking into

SPEAKER_32: account the downside risk of spotify with regulation if they don't get this right which i think is actually real i was kind of not even thinking about that so you made me think about that and then also joe taking more responsibility which actually has now i think our positions were kind of two circles that were close together and now if you kind of push them together a little bit i think what we figured out today because you and i have been debating this on and we have a different opinion um i was always like buyer beware like it's a comedian and now i'm kind of like wait a second if

SPEAKER_01: a comedian does get to this level of scale and the publisher is at this level of scale during a

SPEAKER_00: pandemic and it could be resulting in public health crisis yeah maybe you take a little more care and you do that proactively because it's the right thing to do like where is his producers like if i was spotify i would sit with joe and be like here's like 250 000 extra a year hire five scientists part-time to just fact check your own pod 50k each five scientists and anytime you talk about science the show

SPEAKER_32: i was talking about you just have them do that and we'll make an after joe show after joe show

SPEAKER_74: is actually a good title dude after joe show is a good title and would be huge yeah it'd be huge just

Jason Calacanis: like the talking dead yeah i mean listen you're a great co-host i love having these conversations

SPEAKER_554: with you and i love that like i do love that our you know our chat we're in we're at a point in

Jason Calacanis: america where we literally have to relearn how to disagree and i have been proud of most of the people in our chat today who are having an argument like a conversation way where they are trying to educate each other and it's great to see not everybody but like a lot of them i think if you

SPEAKER_32: stop arguing and just take the approach of like let's hash this out what is valid about each

SPEAKER_64: position and when if you just give a little more space to what's valid about the other person's position and what is an outcome that's good for everybody yeah like i'm always thinking because

SPEAKER_87: i work with startups whenever there's problems i'm just like what's the solution what's our plan i just immediately go to that and they're like oh my god there's so many problems we've up this we up that and i'm like great assessment what's the plan and people like jacal you're the greatest board member ever the greatest mentor i'm like because i stopped wallowing in the problems and i just got us focused on the plan and like when you start joining boards you'll be faced with crises constantly

SPEAKER_64: and if you can be that person who says well in a crisis you gotta you do have to assess and that's

SPEAKER_32: what we did here we were assessing what's the problem and it is misinformation what's the solution

SPEAKER_245: better information you know more thoughtfulness 100 percent be more thoughtful you know we're

SPEAKER_23: thoughtful just listen let's make 2022 the year of and and the year of and and it's a way of being

SPEAKER_514: more thoughtful yes and how many yeah thoughtfulness here's interesting are there i didn't know we had

SPEAKER_544: voting in youtube but one of the producers just put out i know a thing up here how many joe rogan

SPEAKER_44: episodes do you listen to him on zero one two three forty eight nine i think i'm more like one or two so i'll pick one two three oh 37 of our audience listens to one two three interesting only 26 of our audience listens to none that is we have a podcasting audience so the majority of our audience listens to

SPEAKER_64: joe rogan every month big overlap interesting all right everybody thanks for tuning in please rate and subscribe go to thisweekinstartups.com and give us your email address if you want to get invited to meetups and yada yada go to thisweekinstartups.com slash slack if you want to join our slack and come to

SPEAKER_129: our meetups which are at thisweekinstartups.com slash meetups okay we'll see you all next time bye

SPEAKER_573: bye bye hey guys rachel reporting here on february 14th and 15th we'll be hosting founder university intensive this is a two-day program for founders now this course is only open to women founders

SPEAKER_576: we'll be hosting a course open to everyone on may 9th and 10th you can apply for both

SPEAKER_14: at founder.university and applications for the longer 12-week founder university program are due on february 14th and you can also apply for those at founder.university follow jason and molly on twitter

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SPEAKER_576: tired of hearing from jason six days a week you can hear him read his book angel at angelthebook.com slash audible